


Keep Alive the Memory

by amyfortuna



Series: Silmread Ficlets [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Character Study, Fourth Age, Gen, Minas Tirith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 16:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9333476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/pseuds/amyfortuna
Summary: Findegil, the King’s Writer, is nearly done copying the Red Book, and reflects on both the past and his own future.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little ficlet for [@silmread](http://silmread.tumblr.com), about the Prologue to Lord of the Rings.

Findegil let his pen fall from his fingers as the light went from the western windows. In the distance he could hear the sounds of children shouting as they played some game, and the ceaseless, steady, march of the Watch on the walls of the city.

The copy of ‘Translations from the Elvish’ was nearly complete. It was in part a translation itself, due to the differences in spoken language between the end of the Third Age – a time so distant now that Findegil knew no one whose parents had been alive to see it, save the King Eldarion and his sisters – and what was known as the Fourth Age, the year 172. Only a few more paragraphs remained to be written down, and then he could append his final note, sign off on his work, and take the time to rest that he so desperately needed.

His mentor, Barahir, grandson of the famed steward Faramir, would be proud, he thought. It hadn’t proved easy to interpret some of the more obscure phrases, and he’d had to make guesses where some of the parchment itself was worn away with time. The document was well over a hundred years old, and in its day had travelled from Eriador to Minas Tirith. Though the King Elessar had ensured it was preserved well, the copying of it was overdue.

Perhaps, when he was done, he would travel. The far-distant faded lands of the Elves, fair Lothlórien, ancient Rivendell, beckoned to him. Did the sons of Elrond dwell still in that far valley where so many great deeds had been pondered, and so much learning might still reside? Did mallorn trees still grow in Lórien?

And what of the Shire? Were hobbits still there, in their law-given lands, going about their daily affairs in peace and comfort? Did descendants of Sam, of Merry, of Pippin, still talk of the adventures of their great-grandfathers, or was the War of the Ring all but forgotten?

Findegil looked down at his work in the dim light, appreciating the sharp edges and subtle curves of each of the words on the page. It was the duty of a scribe to keep alive the memory, to preserve the past, in all its fear and wonder, in all its beauty and suffering. Thousands of years of war and peace, of joy and sorrow, of love and hate, were kept in these pages. Here, the past was safe.

And someday, far beyond the measure of his own knowledge, like a beacon message passing from hilltop to glen, a copy of this very book would reach hands that would bring it once more to common knowledge, would set the world aflame with wonder, would make the people in it live again in imagination and in dreams.

He set the book aside with reverent hands, smoothing down the final page like he would have caressed a lover. Tomorrow it would be finished, and after a time of rest and travel, new work would call him home.


End file.
